Support structures for suspending a seat for playground swinging have been commonly engineered in the past with little or no imagination to allow a youngster to improvise and change the action of the swing for greater enjoyment. For example, the well-known gym swing comprises a seat suspended by two ropes or chains from a stationary, rigid support and allows only simple back and forth motion. One change that can be made on any swing is simply to adjust the length of rope or chain, which alters the periodicity of the pendulum action. By shortening the rope, the child swings faster over a smaller arc and by lengthening the rope, he experiences a longer, but slower swing. Thus, it is desirable to provide convenient means for a child to adjust the support line in a swinging apparatus to permit him to control the swinging characteristics. Heretofore, rope or chain length has been fixed or has been inconvenient for the child to adjust. Furthermore, these prior devices, being typically rigid, provide little, if any, bouncing action to the seat. With both line control and a support allowing resilient action as I contemplate, a child can improvise new actions and games, greatly enhancing the enjoyment, as well as the educational value of the device.
In providing a support rod for boat mooring or the like, it is desirable that the support rod be somewhat flexible in order to "give" as the boat rides vertically on waves and transversely with surface currents.
In one type of prior art arrangement, Benzel U.S. Pat. No. 3,183,877, a rope is supported by a rod with one end of the rope having a hook for attachment to an eye on the boat and the other end tied down to a fixture on the dock. The rope must be taut enough to prevent excessive transverse movement of the boat in the water to avoid striking the dock, yet flexible enough to allow nominal boat movement. The rope length is adjustable in order to accommodate boats of different sizes and varying tides. These mooring devices of the prior art of which I am aware require the rope to be untied from the fixture on the dock each time an adjustment is made. This adjustment is time consuming and inconvenient. Furthermore, the rope dangling from the rod has a tendency to become entangled with other lines and is unsightly.